Synergy Between Density and Energy for Building Retrofits In Amsterdam Nieuw-West

Abstract

The thesis explores the necessity of change for the building stock of Amsterdam driven by the cities climate and densification targets, to develop a design of a retrofit for a building typology that maximizes the areas ability to reach these objectives. The area analysed for the retrofit design was a defined region in Amsterdam Nieuw-west, a current hotbed of developments that aim to regenerate the urban environment. The first demand explored is the need to reduce energy consumption in a building stock primarily made up of post-war buildings to achieve the drastic C02 reductions targets; a necessity which applies
to all existing pre-energy-regulation buildings. Secondly, the demand to densify the city, as the population of Amsterdam continues to grow at a constant rate, fuelling the demand for accommodation and leaving it unmet by supply. The thesis sought to organize and quantify both these needs to identify a building typology that provided the best opportunity for retrofitting for both energysaving and densification, which formulated the following research question:
How can the design of a retrofit measure offer integrated solutions to energy reduction and densification for a suitable residential building typology in the housing stock of Nieuw-West Amsterdam?
The first part of the research question required identifying the suitable building typology, which was done by collecting available data to categorize and quantify the characteristics of the building typologies present in the area, including their energy demand, the ownership status, type of roof, etc. Together with densification strategies and benchmark energy-saving measures for each building typology a suitable typology approach was developed which identified the 1950’s Portiekflat, owned by social housing corporations, as the typology to base the retrofit design on, using top-up as the main densification strategy and replace and wrap principles for the energy aspect of the retrofit. Moreover, the final results for the most suitable typology showed an estimated C02 emission reduction of 19200 tons and an added capacity of 31900m2, which represents a potential C02 emission reduction of 5.8% and 2.5% increase in densification of the whole existing building stock in the area.
The second part focuses on systematically formulating the design of the retrofit measure to understand the central design decisions for choosing different design solutions to form an overall design strategy. Together with the literature
results, the main design aspects of the retrofit measure are identified that serve as elements of the design strategy.
These include energy performance, accessibility, structure, and housing quality, to which individual approaches are developed for the widespread application of the building typology together with the packaged decision paths that lead to them. The resulting combinations of approaches provide the design strategy which integrates the design aspects of the retrofit measure together and provides the basis for the final retrofit design. At this stage, the design explores the technical solutions of the chosen design strategy for a case-study building, including the application of retrofit measures, construction, and the building services. However, the primary relevance and answer to the research question is provided by the design process, manifested by three final products, the retrofit for energy-reduction and topping up the toolbox, the design decision tool and design strategy brief, which provides the different integrations between design aspects given the design decisions. In conclusion, the final research at its core aims to offer a more significant incentive to social housing corporations by aligning Amsterdam’s need to densify with the need to energy-retrofit. In other words, densification can be used as fuel to power and accelerate an almost stagnant energy-retrofit rate which is missing the opportunity to tap into huge energy-saving potentials.